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Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP December 2018 H17124.1 White Paper Abstract This white paper provides an overview of the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP including Ready Node for SAP HANA, Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out, and two configurations of Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes. Dell EMC Solutions

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Page 1: Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP - cdn-prod.scdn6.secure ... · Dell EMC RecoverPoint technology further protects SAP environments by ensuring business continuity and enabling disaster

Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP December 2018

H17124.1

White Paper

AbstractThis white paper provides an overview of the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP including Ready Node for SAP HANA, Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out, and two configurations of Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes.

Dell EMC Solutions

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Copyright

2 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

The information in this publication is provided as is. Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

Copyright © 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Intel, the Intel logo, the Intel Inside logo, and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. Published in the USA 12/18 White Paper H17124.1.

Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

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Contents

3 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Contents

Executive summary ........................................................................................................................ 4

Technology overview ...................................................................................................................... 6

Ready Node for SAP HANA ............................................................................................................ 8

Ready Bundles for SAP HANA: Overview ................................................................................... 11

Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out ...................................................................................... 12

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes ............................................................................................ 14

Use case: Data Domain protection for SAP landscapes ........................................................... 19

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 25

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Executive summary

4 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Executive summary In today’s business environment, where value is defined by fast delivery of applications and features that give the business a competitive edge, IT organizations face increasing pressure to speed the process of modernizing application infrastructure. In response to that pressure, organizations are investing in infrastructure solutions that are configured to optimize applications and databases. These investments are particularly important in environments that require SAP HANA certifications across servers and storage.

Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP enable IT to seamlessly deliver specialized SAP infrastructure configurations to shorten the time to value. Ready Solutions deliver infrastructure in just days, so organizations no longer need to spend months on testing and integrating separate hardware components. Ready Solutions for SAP integrate Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, networking, and storage to deliver tested, validated, and certified infrastructure configurations for almost any SAP workload.

All Ready Solutions for SAP enable customers to start with existing NetWeaver landscapes and use the same hardware when they move to SAP HANA. Alternatively, if the requirement is for SAP HANA, Ready Solutions for SAP accelerate value by providing a tested and validated infrastructure. The key is to invest once in an SAP solution that will support today’s and tomorrow’s application requirements. Ready Solutions let customers start at the right size for their current business and then easily scale up or scale out SAP HANA as needed.

To provide critical protection for the back office operations that SAP databases and landscapes support, Ready Solutions for SAP can easily integrate Dell EMC Data Domain systems. Data Domain technology with Dell EMC DD Boost software minimizes backup windows, requires minimal overhead, and enables the retention of more backups.

Dell EMC RecoverPoint technology further protects SAP environments by ensuring business continuity and enabling disaster recovery beyond that provided by SAP HANA replication. RecoverPoint software provides scale-out consistency across applications, consistent point-in-time images of interrelated applications, and recovery to any point in time and to bookmarks that are created by users.

Ready Solutions for SAP are designed to eliminate the long and complex cycles of modernizing the SAP landscape so the business can focus on what matters, value. Holistic in design, Ready Solutions are fast and scalable, and include advanced technologies that protect data and offer savings to the business.

The Ready Solutions for SAP portfolio includes the following solutions:

• Ready Node for SAP HANA—Offers the most direct path to value in a single-server configuration that easily plugs into your existing data center. Ready Nodesare designed to optimize scale-up configuration for SAP HANA.

• Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out—Scales seamlessly from two to sixteennodes by using a Dell EMC Compellent storage array with PowerEdge servers.

• Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Dell EMC Unity—Enables seamlessmanagement of small to medium landscapes by incorporating Unity arrays andPowerEdge servers.

Business case

Ready Solutions for SAP portfolio overview

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Executive summary

5 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

• Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Dell EMC VMAX All Flash—IncludesVMAX 250F or VMAX 950F all-flash arrays with PowerEdge servers to provide apowerful combination of performance, provisioning, and data protection features forlandscapes.

Dell EMC engineering conducts tests to simulate customer environments and to measure and demonstrate the value of using Ready Solutions for SAP. At the conclusion of this paper, we present one of those use cases, where we integrated a Data Domain system into an SAP landscape to show how customers can protect their mission-critical environments. Here are the key results of that use case:

• Reduced CPU utilization—CPU utilization for the first backup averaged 27percent. Utilization dropped substantially after that, with the fourth and finalbackups averaging 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively. DD Boost technologysignificantly minimized the impact of backups on the production server.

• Reduced network utilization—Network bandwidth utilization dropped from 450Mb/s during the first backup to 100 Mb/s for the second and third backups, and thento 15 Mb/s for the fourth and final backups.

• Space savings—With Data Domain technology, the total compression factor forthe first full backup was 2.8. It increased to 7.7 for the second backup and to 9.2 forthe third backup. The fourth and final backups achieved even greater spacesavings, with total compression factors of 76 and 61 respectively. The higher thetotal compression factor the greater the space savings.

For more details about our testing, see Use case: Data Domain protection for SAP landscapes on page 19. Every customer environment is different, so backup results will vary.

The purpose of this document is to provide a portfolio review of Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP and to describe how each solution is optimized to accelerate and protect SAP mission-critical systems.

This paper is for readers who are familiar with SAP and interested in learning about solutions for optimizing SAP applications and databases.

Dell EMC and the authors of this document welcome your feedback. Contact the Dell EMC Solutions team with your comments.

Authors: Sam Lucido, Phil Hummel, Karen Johnson

Key results

Document purpose

Audience

We welcome your feedback

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Technology overview

6 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Technology overview

Dell EMC Ready Solutions are designed and validated to accelerate value and provide your business with a trusted platform for SAP workloads. Companies worldwide in all types of industries use SAP as a robust technology that enables their digital transformation. In-memory databases and powerful analytics of big data enable real-time insights into the business, enabling executives to make evidence-based decisions. The digital transformation begins by choosing a platform that easily plugs into your requirements and speeds the transformation.

Ready Solutions for SAP differentiate themselves from other solutions by providing customers the results from our extensive validation testing. The core goal of our validation work is to show customers key findings and proof points that demonstrate the value of the solutions. Identifying the best modern platform for your SAP digital transformation depends on our ability to answer your material questions, including:

• Can you characterize performance?

• What SAP workloads have been validated?

• What consolidation capabilities does the solution have?

• What technologies in the solution offer savings?

• How does this solution protect critical data?

We take these real-world questions and use them to develop validation tests that provide customers with the answers they need to be successful in their SAP digital transformation journey. All Ready Solutions share these core attributes:

• Tested—Each solution has undergone extensive testing by Dell EMC engineeringto ensure that every part of the solutions works seamlessly, is optimized for SAPworkloads, and protects critical data.

• Certified—Ready Solution servers and storage are certified with SAP HANA, socustomers have the flexibility to use NetWeaver and SAP HANA.

• Validated—Each Ready Solution is tested as an integrated system usingworkloads that characterize real-world SAP implementations.

In addition, Dell EMC provides customers the results of our validation testing. Proof points provide a better understanding of the strengths and capabilities of the solution and indicate how it would perform in your data center.

Ready Solutions have been designed to accelerate the time to value by enabling customers to have the systems up and running in a matter of days, not weeks. Every solution has both a validation guide and deployment guide that detail all the best practices that Dell EMC engineering uses during validation testing. These same best practices ensure that Ready Solutions are optimized for your SAP ecosystem.

Dell EMC has a long history of protecting mission-critical data and is on Gartner’s 2017 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions. The Data Domain system with DD Boost software works directly with SAP HANA and other databases to

Introduction to Ready Solutions for SAP

Data protection for SAP

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Technology overview

7 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

back up and protect your data. The DD Boost application agent is certified and integrates with the SAP HANA Backint interface to enable SAP HANA database data and redo log backups and restores.

SAP Basis administrators can then perform backup, recover, inquire, and delete operations by running any of the supported SAP HANA tools:

• SAP HANA command line interface with the hdbsql command

• SAP HANA Studio UI

• SAP DBA Cockpit in the Computing Center Management System (CCMS) UI

Basis administrators can use those tools to perform the following SAP HANA operations on the single database containers and multitenant database containers:

• Online backups

• Full database backups

• Redo log backups

• Delta (incremental and differential) backups

• Scheduling of full backups and delta backups with SAP HANA SPS 12 or later

• Recovery of the database to the most recent state, a specific point-in-time, aspecific data backup, or a log position

• Recovery to the original host or to an alternate host with SAP HANA SPS 12 orlater

DD Boost software performs sourced-based deduplication, sending only changed blocks over the network to the Data Domain system, thus minimizing network utilization and maintaining fast backup times. Inline data verification, continuous fault detection, and self-healing are part of the Data Domain invulnerability architecture, ensuring that your SAP HANA environment has no integrity issues. To protect against a disaster, the Data Domain system can replicate backups to another Data Domain appliance. The replication is network-efficient and only replicates unique data across the WAN.

Dell EMC RecoverPoint technology provides continuous data protection for physical and VMware virtualized environments to protect application data. The RecoverPoint solution performs bandwidth-efficient, no-data-loss replication that can protect data locally and remotely for any point-in-time recovery. With RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, your IT organization can protect individual virtual machines and even exclude specified Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) files. Most importantly, RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines supports protecting Ready Nodes with direct-attached storage (DAS) as well as VMware vSAN, network-attached storage (NAS), and storage area network (SAN) attached storage.

Using the RecoverPoint solution instead of SAP HANA replication provides these benefits:

• Consistent point-in-time images of all data-dependent interrelated databases andapplications

• Scale-out consistency across databases and applications

• Simple recovery to any point-in-time or user-created bookmark

Business continuity and disaster recovery for SAP HANA

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Ready Node for SAP HANA

8 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines can synchronously protect SAP HANA databases locally and asynchronously protect them remotely, or do both at the same time. A recent paper, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration, validates RecoverPoint protection of virtualized SAP HANA implementations and provides best practices to make customers successful.

Ready Node for SAP HANA Dell EMC was in a statistical tie for first place in worldwide server unit share as of November 2017, according to an IDC Worldwide Server Market report. The PowerEdge R740xd, which received a 5-star rating and the “Editor’s Choice” award from IT Pro, is one of several Ready Node for SAP HANA options.

Performance design PowerEdge servers use high-performance Intel Xeon Platinum processors. With Xeon Platinum processors, you can achieve faster real-time insights from in-memory SAP HANA workloads, hold larger working datasets, and ensure sufficient memory for query execution. PowerEdge servers with Xeon Platinum processors achieved two best published SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmarks. Physical and virtual configuration options on page 9 provides more information about the SAP SD benchmarks.

PowerEdge servers extend performance into DAS by offering flexibility with high capacity SAS and SATA drives, and faster solid-state drives (SSDs). The range of storage options gives SAP HANA the storage performance and capacity to meet workload demands.

Faster time-to-value Ready Nodes are single-server solutions, ideal for new SAP HANA implementations where the business wants to start small, for expenditure savings, but needs the capability to incrementally scale. Ready Nodes are also ideal for refreshing the compute tier to accelerate real-time analytics, query execution, and application response time.

You can deploy, update, monitor, and maintain PowerEdge servers with integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC). Embedded in every server, iDRAC provides functionality that accelerates Ready Node deployment into the data center and can alert you when issues occur, no matter where you are. iDRAC is agent-free and requires no operating system, so you can remotely manage the Ready Node—even if the server is not operational.

In the Ready Solutions family, Ready Nodes offer the fastest time-to-value. The server solution plugs into the data center with minimal physical setup requirements. Dell EMC has a team of SAP Specialists who have years of experience. These experts collaborate with you to ensure that the validated and certified PowerEdge server configuration is sized for planned workloads. Dell EMC has services and partners to assist with all aspects of mobilizing Ready Solutions in your data center.

Ready Nodes for SAP support both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Applications. With Ready Nodes, you have the flexibility to choose which Linux operating system best fits with your IT organization.

PowerEdge servers

SUSE and Red Hat Linux options

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Ready Node for SAP HANA

9 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Dell EMC believes that SAP HANA certification benefits customers because it is a proof point to demonstrate that our hardware solutions are aligned with SAP solutions. The SAP certification combined with our extensive testing and validation of Ready Nodes enables faster implementations and deployments for SAP HANA. For example, all the technical details that optimize SAP HANA deployments are included in the Dell EMC engineering-developed validation and deployment guides.

VMware vSphere virtualization enables hardware abstraction, consolidation, live migration, high availability, and centralized management of SAP HANA landscapes. All our Ready Solutions for SAP are tested with VMware vSphere virtualization so IT organizations with a virtual infrastructure can seamlessly integrate our nodes, bundles, and systems. VMware vSphere is optional; thus, customers can choose from physical or virtual configurations of Ready Nodes.

The following figure shows the scale-up architecture of Ready Node for SAP.

Figure 1. Ready Node for SAP architecture

The PowerEdge R740xd server offers scalability and performance in a compact 2U, 2-socket server platform. Start small with 192 GB of memory for analytic workloads and scale up to 1.5 TB. For transactional workloads, such as with Business Suite on SAP HANA, use the 3 TB memory configuration. The PowerEdge R740 holds the best published 2-socket SAP SD 2-Tier benchmark on Linux as of April 25, 2018:

Results of the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740 on the two-socket SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) 2-Tier benchmark, number of benchmark users 32085. SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0, SAP ASE 16, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3, with two Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processors (2 CPUs, 56 cores and 112 threads) and 786432 MB of memory. Certification number 2017017. For more details, see http://www.sap.com/benchmark.

Validation and certification

Physical and virtual configuration options

Scale-up architecture and performance

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Ready Node for SAP HANA

10 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

For more information on the PowerEdge R740xd, see PowerEdge R740xd Rack Server.

The PowerEdge R940 server offers 3U, 2- and 4-socket configuration options. For analytic workloads, start with as little as 192 GB and scale up to 3 TB of memory. For transactional workloads, 3 TB and 6 TB memory configurations are available. The PowerEdge R940 has the best published 4-socket SAP SD 2-Tier benchmark on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Best SAP BW Advanced Mixed Load (BW AML) Standard Application benchmark as of April 25, 2018:

• Results of the Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 on the four-socket SAP Salesand Distribution (SD) 2-Tier benchmark, number of benchmark users62500. SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0, SAP ASE 16, RedHat Enterprise Linux 7.3, with four Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processors (4CPUs, 112 cores and 224 threads) and 1572864 MB of memory.Certification number 2017018. For more details, seehttp://www.sap.com/benchmark.

• Results of initial record load of 2 billion on the SAP BW Advanced MixedLoad (BW AML) Standard Application benchmark using the Dell EMCPowerEdge R940 with Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processor (4 CPUs, 112cores, 224 threads) and 1536 GB main memory. SAP HANA 1.0, SuSELinux Enterprise Server 12, and certification number 2017037. For moredetails, see http://www.sap.com/benchmark.

For more information on the PowerEdge R940, see PowerEdge R940 Rack Server.

The following table shows how you can start with a small configuration and scale it up over time to address application growth. The initial investment in SAP HANA and Ready Nodes matches business requirements, thus minimizing the need for a large up-front investment. Depending on the growth rate of the SAP ecosystem, the cost savings could extend over several months. With the capability of scaling up incrementally, you invest when needed to keep costs aligned to the business. Dell EMC also offers an earlier generation of PowerEdge servers that provides less scale but at a lower cost. Ask your sales representative if an earlier generation of PowerEdge servers is right for your business.

Table 1. Ready Node for SAP HANA: PowerEdge memory configurations

Specifications

PowerEdge server R740xd R940 R930

Number of sockets 2 2 or 4 2 or 4

Memory for analytic workloads: BW, BW/4 HANA and SoH

192 GB to 1.5 TB scale up

192 GB to 3 TB scale up

128 GB to 2 TB

Memory for transactional workloads: Business Suite on SAP HANA

3 TB 3 TB and 6 TB scale up

1 TB and up to 4 TB scale up

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Ready Bundles for SAP HANA: Overview

11 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Ready Nodes for SAP HANA can be deployed in a way that best matches the business requirements.

Deployment models include:

• Deterministic performance model—In this configuration, the Ready Node isdedicated to only one workload. Having all the compute and storage resourcesdedicated to one application makes performance highly deterministic, simplifyingmanagement, security, and remediation. This is the most frequently used model inproduction environments because the benefits outweigh any loss of utilization. Thedeterministic performance model works for single SAP HANA environments. Thismodel also works well for physical and virtual platforms.

The disadvantage of this model is that the workload or application might not fullyuse all the available resources; thus, utilization is not maximized.

• Consolidation performance model—In this configuration, the Ready Node usesVMware vSphere virtualization to support multiple workloads. Although vSphereperformance can be deterministic, vSphere does not offer the same level ofperformance isolation as a fully dedicated Ready Node. Having multiple workloadson a PowerEdge server maximizes utilization of available resources but alsoincreases configuration management. The consolidation performance model iscommonly used for nonproduction environments, where performance is not ascritical to the business.

• Storage capacity model—This configuration uses high-capacity drives with flashdrives for a more granular storage model. For example, for an SAP HANA single-node configuration with virtualization, we recommend the following minimalconfiguration:

Operating system, SAP binaries, log files: 5 x 1.8 TB SAS drives with 1 hotspare in RAID 5

Data volume: 3 x 1.6 TB SAS SSD with 1 hot spare in RAID 5

This configuration shows the flexibility in the storage design to address parts of the file system that will require more or less performance. The operating system, SAP binaries, and log files reside on high-capacity SAS drives because these file systems require moderate storage performance. The data volumes reside on faster SSDs for faster data access.

Ready Bundles for SAP HANA: Overview

Ready Bundles are integrated solutions that include servers, networking, and storage, providing an effective path to modernizing the entire SAP ecosystem infrastructure. Ready Bundles build upon Ready Nodes by using the same servers and then adding networking and storage. One of the key differences between Ready Nodes and Ready Bundles is that storage moves from DAS to a storage area network (SAN).

Dell EMC storage enables greater consolidation, more scalability, all-flash performance, more integrations, and enterprise-class protection with up to 99.9999 percent availability.

Deployment models

Introduction

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Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out

12 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Dell EMC arrays can save on storage space using advanced technologies like thin provisioning, data compression, and deduplication.

Thin provisioning Thin provisioning is the capability of the storage array to present allocated unused space as free space on the storage array. For example, if 2 TB of space is allocated to an application that uses only 1 TB of space, the unused 1 TB is available as free space on the storage array. Thin provisioning enables more efficient use of space on the Dell EMC storage array and works seamlessly with applications.

Data compression Data compression reduces the amount of space a database or application uses on the storage array. For example, at a 2:1 compression ratio, a 1 TB database can be compressed to 500 GB on the storage array. The achievable compression is dependent on the variability of the data and data types, and varies for each database. Compression is completely transparent to the database and applications, which means that it introduces no complexities and no need for extra considerations.

Data deduplication Data deduplication offers big space savings when an SAP database is cloned on the storage array. Storage or SAP administrators use snapshots to quickly make a copy of production database to repurpose it as a test or development database. When the snapshot of the database is created, data deduplication eliminates having to create a secondary full copy of the data. The Dell EMC storage systems use metadata pointers to the source data. When new data is written to the source data a new unique block is created. For example, taking a snapshot of a 3 TB database takes no initial space on the storage array, thus providing the business a space savings of 3 TB.

Data reduction Compression, deduplication, and thin provisioning combine to form the total data reduction ratio. The data reduction ratio is the amount of space normally taken without space-saving technologies divided by the actual space that is used on the storage array with space-saving technologies. For example, 1,000 GB of data without any space-saving technologies might require only 100 GB on the storage array with space-saving technologies. Therefore, the data reduction ratio is 10:1. The higher the data reduction ratio, the greater the efficiency, utilization, and space savings you receive from the Dell EMC storage array.

Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out simplifies configuration and design by providing a proven platform for real-time analytics. Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out enables configuration flexibility to match current business requirements and expandability for future data analytics. With Dell EMC and SAP, you receive a high-performance scale-out architecture in a fully integrated, cost-effective bundle that is optimized for real-time data processing.

Benefits of storage consolidation

Introduction

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Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out

13 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Other benefits of Ready Bundle for SAP HANA include:

• SAP HANA certification

• Faster time to data analytics

• Dell EMC engineering validation and optimization

• Accelerated implementation of SAP HANA scale-out architecture

• Ability for the business to focus on the value of data analytics, not infrastructure

A multiple-host system overcomes the limitation of a single physical server and enables workload to be distributed across servers to increase parallel processing of data and, thus, performance. Another advantage of the SAP HANA scale-out distributed system is that a host can be configured to work in standby mode. A host in standby mode can automatically take over for an active node in the case of failure. This active/passive design enables the scale-out distributed architecture to be highly available. Benefits of data distribution include:

• Workload distribution at the object level—Tables can be assigned to different index servers.

• Workload distribution at the sub-object level—Tables can be split, or partitioned, across separate index servers.

• Workload parallelization—A table can be replicated across multiple index servers for better query and join performance.

Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out uses the PowerEdge R940 servers and the Dell EMC Compellent SC5020 storage array. Features that make the Compellent SC5020 the right choice for an SAP HANA scale-out architecture include:

• Support for HDD drives and flash drives like SLC, MLC, and TLC formats with a self-optimizing architecture that responds to real-time data use

• Intelligent data reduction with data progression, which saves money on SSDs or HDDs—or both in hybrid systems

• Space-efficient snapshots for fast provisioning of SAP databases and remote synchronous/asynchronous replication for disaster recovery

Compellent storage arrays with Dell EMC Fluid File System architecture can automatically move high-intensity I/O requests to faster SSD storage for submillisecond reads and writes. Cold and inactive data remains on high-capacity SAS drives, providing intelligent data placement.

Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out can expand up to 16 PowerEdge R940 server worker nodes and 2 standby nodes. Each SAP HANA node is configured with 3 TB of RAM and SAP HANA SPS 12. The following table provides an overview of the components of a PowerEdge R940 server SAP HANA worker node. For a full list of all components, contact your Dell EMC representative.

Benefits of scale-out distributed systems

Server and storage features

Configurations

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Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes

14 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Table 2. PowerEdge R940 server SAP HANA scale-out worker node

Component Specifications

CPU 4 x Intel Xeon Skylake Platinum 8180/M or 8176/M

Memory SAP HANA scale-out supports 3 TB maximum per node with SPS11+ (48 x 64 GB DIMMs)

I/O base Maximum 13 slots (3 x 8 + 10 x 16) for 4 CPUs

Network 2 x Intel X710 quad port 10 Gb

RAID controller PERC-10 H740P RAID controller with 8 GB NV cache

Storage connectivity 2 x QLE2690 16 Gb FC HBA

Power Up to 2 AC or DC power supplies

The minimum scale-out configuration starts with 6 TB, grows in increments of 3 TB per node, and expands up to a maximum of 48 TB. The 48 TB scale-out configuration supports approximately 480 TB of uncompressed data across the 16 worker nodes.

The following table provides an overview of the minimum and maximum R940 configurations. For a full list of all components, contact your Dell EMC representative. Table 3. Minimum and maximum R940 scale-out configurations

Component Specifications

6 TB configuration 48 TB configuration

SAP HANA worker nodes 2 x R940 16 x R940

SAP HANA standby nodes 1 or 2 1 or 2

Memory per node 3 TB 3 TB

Storage • 1 x SC5020• 6 x 960 GB SSD• 18 x 1.8 TB SAS

• 2 x SC5020• 12 x 960 GB SSD• 54 x 1.8 TB SAS

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes An SAP landscape is a group of databases or applications that are cloned from a gold or production system for change management. Change management in this context means supporting individuals and teams who are responsible for creating new features and functionality or updating existing features and functionality in the database or applications.

SAP landscapes use production copies to standardize on a progression methodology to ensure the fast and reliable delivery of new features and updates to the database. For example, copies of production are repurposed for:

• Test—Used for initial development and testing activities to determine viability

• Development—Used for core development

SAP landscape overview

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Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes

15 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

• Quality assurance—Used for final functional and performance testing of newcode before promotion to production

In the change management process, the integrity of all updates is tested before the updates are promoted to the next environment. Management of the SAP landscape can be a significant effort that takes most of the SAP Basis team’s time.

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Dell EMC Unity includes PowerEdge R740xd and R940 servers and Unity mid-range storage. This Ready Bundle is ideal for customers who are looking for fast performance, simplicity in a small footprint, and a cost-effective platform. Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Unity is uniquely designed to support today’s workloads and future SAP HANA workloads, thus extending the value of this platform for your business. Because all the hardware is certified for SAP HANA, customers can start by supporting their traditional landscapes and then migrate to SAP HANA using the same bundle.

Unity arrays offer outstanding flexibility, supporting multiple storage types including block, file, and VMware VVols, and provide concurrent support for native NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel protocols. Unity storage systems use dual processors in a Dell EMC patented multicore operating environment to deliver fast performance and efficiency.

Unity snapshots: Fast and flexible SAP landscape provisioning Unity snapshots support compression-enabled LUNs and VMware VMFS datastores. If the production NetWeaver database uses Unity compression, the snapshot inherits the space savings. Any new writes to the source or snapshot pass through the compression algorithms and achieve additional space savings.

Unity snapshots provide extensive capabilities to support management and provisioning of SAP databases in a landscape. When creating a snapshot, you can add a name, a description, and a retention policy to simplify management. Snapshot operations include:

• Create—The Create operation enables you to quickly create write-consistentsnapshots of a database. The snapshots consume almost no space because theystill share blocks with the primary database.

• Copy—With the Copy operation, you can create a snapshot of a snapshot, which isuseful when a patch needs to be quickly tested but other work also needs to bepreserved. For example, you can create a copy of a quality assurance (QA)database, test a priority patch, and then restore QA to its prior state.

• Refresh—With Refresh, you can update a snapshot with the current data from theproduction database. The refresh process deletes the current contents of thesnapshot and updates the snapshot with the data from the source database. Beforethe refresh operation, you can run a copy operation to preserve the currentcontents of the snapshot.

• Delete—The Delete option removes the database from the storage system, which,depending on whether the snapshot contains unique data, might return space to thestorage pool.

These operations are just a few of many Unity array features that enable the quick provisioning of SAP databases and applications. For a detailed review, see the Dell EMC Unity: Snapshots and Thin Clones White Paper.

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Dell EMC Unity

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Unity data protection: Native protection for SAP landscapes Dell EMC Unity arrays offer several data protection options for SAP landscapes.

Native synchronous block replication Native synchronous block replication uses consistency groups to replicate an SAP NetWeaver database or application to another Unity array within the data center. Synchronous replication writes to the primary and secondary copies before acknowledging a successful write back to the database, ensuring that recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) are near zero.

Native asynchronous unified replication Native asynchronous unified replication uses consistency groups to replicate an SAP NetWeaver database or application to another Unity array at another data center for disaster recovery. Asynchronous replication refreshes a snapshot of the SAP database on a schedule or by a manual trigger. The point-in-time when the last asynchronous copy was created determines both RPO and RTO.

Dell EMC RecoverPoint replication Dell EMC RecoverPoint data protection with the Unity array enables replication of SAP NetWeaver databases and applications synchronously or asynchronously with DVR-like rollback to any point-in-time. The Unity array includes a free RecoverPoint Basic license, enabling replication between the Unity system and Dell EMC VNX, Dell EMC VNXe, and other Unity systems.

For more details about the extensive data protection capabilities of the Unity array, see the Dell EMC Unity: Replication Technologies White Paper.

Unity data acceleration features: Fast, cost-efficient performance The Unity array has the following advanced technologies that automatically accelerate performance of databases and applications:

• Dell EMC FAST VP—FAST VP is only applicable to hybrid pools within the array.Hybrid pools are pools of different drive types, for example, an all-flash pool, a SAS15 K RPM pool, and a SAS 10 K RPM pool. FAST VP works by analyzing dataactivity and automatically moving the data to the appropriate drive type for optimalperformance.

• Dell EMC FAST Cache—FAST Cache is only applicable to hybrid pools within thearray. FAST Cache works by using a group of SAS Flash 2 drives as a cache toaccelerate data on slower drives. FAST Cache can increase IOPS and lowerresponse times for the SAP database, thus improving performance.

To learn more about Unity’s data acceleration technologies and best practices, see Dell EMC Unity: Best Practices Guide.

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with VMAX All Flash includes PowerEdge R740xd and R940 servers and VMAX 250F and 950F all-flash storage array. This Ready Bundle accelerates and protects the more complex landscapes of midsize and large enterprises. The VMAX 250F all-flash array, which comes from more than 20 years of engineering excellence, is a favorite of SAP teams because of its top-rated performance and data-

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with VMAX All Flash

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17 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

protection capabilities. The array brings a high density of IOPS and submillisecond storage latency to Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes.

Start small, grow incrementally With the VMAX 250F all-flash array, you can start small, with an initial capacity of 11.3 TBu in a single Dell EMC V-Brick building block, and later add capacity in increments of 11.3 TBu. You can also manage storage growth by adding a secondary V-Brick block. With typical data reduction, the effective maximum capacity is 1 PBe. For large SAP landscapes, the VMAX 950F maximizes expandability by supporting up to 4.42 PBe of storage capacity. The following table is a brief capacity summary of the VMAX 250F and VMAX 950F arrays. For more information, see Dell EMC VMAX All Flash Family.

Table 4. Overview of capacity for the VMAX 250F and 950F storage arrays

Component Specifications

VMAX 250F/FX VMAX 950F/FX

Maximum capacity per array 1.16 PBe 4.42 PBe

Number of V-Brick blocks Up to 2 Up to 8

Maximum drives per array 100 1,920

VMAX snapshots: Fast and flexible SAP landscape provisioning VMAX arrays use Dell EMC TimeFinder SnapVX snapshot technology to dramatically accelerate provisioning of SAP databases and decrease any performance impact to the production databases. SnapVX supports up to 256 snapshots per volume, enabling many copies of production in a landscape. When creating a production copy, you can add a name, description, and retention policy to simplify management.

SnapVX operations include:

• Create—Dell EMC recommends using SnapVX in the default Nocopy mode forsignificant space savings when creating snapshots with SAP on a VMAX all-flasharray. The Nocopy mode uses advanced pointer technology to deduplicate data, soany production copies take no initial space. After you create a snapshot, you canlink it to as many as 1,024 target volumes, which means the same snapshot can beused to create multiple copies of production.

• Copy—SnapVX can create a snapshot of a snapshot, which, in VMAX terms, iscalled cascading. This operation is useful when a patch needs to be quickly testedbut other work needs to be preserved. For example, you can take a point-in-timesnapshot of your development environment, apply a priority patch, and then restorethe environment to its pervious state prior to the patch.

• Refresh—VMAX snapshots always refer to the point-in-time that a copy ofproduction was created. The Refresh operation relinks to the snapshot, whichreverts the copy to its original state. All data is lost if the database is not backed upor a copy is made prior to relinking.

For detailed information about all SnapVX functionality, see Frequently Asked Questions about TimeFinder SnapVX on VMAX All Flash Storage Arrays.

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VMAX data protection: Native protection for your SAP landscape VMAX offers Dell EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) replication, one of the most customer-proven data protection technologies. With SRDF replication, you can replicate SAP databases and applications between two, three, or four arrays, whether they are in the same data center, on the same campus, or thousands of miles apart. Using SRDF technology, you can protect against any loss by implementing a three-site disaster recovery, business continuity, and disaster-restart architecture.

Replication modes include:

• Synchronous mode (SRDF/S)—Maintains a real-time copy of an SAP database atarrays located within 125 miles or 200 kilometers. Writes from the production hostare acknowledged from the local array and then they are written to the cache on theremote array. Zero data loss occurs because all writes are immediately replicated tothe remote array.

• Asynchronous mode (SRDF/A)—Maintains a dependent write-consistent copy atremote arrays at unlimited distances. Writes from the production host areimmediately acknowledged; thus, SRDF/A has no impact on productionperformance. The RPO, which is determined by the time it takes to replicate uniquedata to the remote array, is typically in the range of seconds.

• SRDF/Metro—Mirrors one copy of the same database across two VMAX arrays.The copies are accessible to hosts attached to each array. SRDF/Metro ensuresthat writes are consistent across the mirrored copy on each array. If one data centeris lost, the surviving VMAX array and attached hosts continue to provide databaseaccess to the business.

For detailed information about these and other advanced data protection capabilities for SAP with the VMAX array, see the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration White Paper.

Integration with SAP Landscape Management Today’s shared storage arrays must offer more than performance to provide greater efficiency and agility. Dell EMC Enterprise Storage Integrator (ESI) enables the VMAX array, as well as other Dell EMC storage arrays, to work with NetWeaver Landscape Management to offload the database copy/clone activity to the storage array.

SAP Landscape Management (SAP LaMa) is an automation and orchestration solution that is designed to simplify, automate, and centralize management of your SAP landscapes. Using SAP LaMa with ESI provides the following functionality:

• System Clone—Creates an exact replication of an existing SAP system with thesame system ID (SID) in an isolated environment

• System Copy—Creates a copy of an existing SAP system with the SID, instancehostnames, or IP addresses changed, and performs post-copy activities

• System Refresh—Replaces a target’s data, which is commonly from anonproduction system, with updated data from a source system, which iscommonly a production system

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Use case: Data Domain protection for SAP landscapes

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When SAP LaMa first offloads the clone to the storage array, the snapshots take no space. As a landscape grows, greater data reduction ratios are achieved due to the value of deduplication. Thus, the technology is increasing the efficiency and utilization of the storage system and providing a better return on your investment.

For more information about how ESI works with SAP LaMa, see the Dell EMC Storage Integration with SAP Landscape Management Software Implementation Guide.

VMAX data acceleration: High-density IOPS and submillisecond latency The VMAX array accelerates all physical reads and writes, and eliminates bottlenecks with Dell EMC FlashBoost software. FlashBoost is designed to deliver the highest performance for demanding workloads such as OLTP and OLAP databases.

The VMAX 250F all-flash array can be configured with a minimum of 512 GB or a maximum of 2 TB of system cache per V-Brick building block. The large cache is used to accelerate all writes, preventing write amplification on flash drives and lowering response times for SAP databases and applications. By acknowledging writes from the system cache, the array accelerates database I/O for log writes, checkpoints, and batching processing, which significantly speeds up these operations.

Reads are also accelerated because reads serviced by the large system cache are an order of magnitude faster than reads that have to go to disk. The VMAX array does accelerate reads from flash drives by using FlashBoost technology to deliver the data from the flash drives directly to the host. The data is then placed in the system cache to service future requests. For large sequential reads—high-bandwidth I/O—the VMAX system uses pre-fetch algorithms and optimized writes.

The Dell EMC VMAX All Flash data sheet provides more detail about the advanced technologies that accelerate data for SAP landscapes and other applications.

Use case: Data Domain protection for SAP landscapes

Production systems running ERP and CRM applications drive critical business processes that enable the company to operate. Whether planned or unplanned, any disruption to the operational processes of the business can represent a significant loss of revenue and a large investment in time to recover from the operational loss. SAP landscapes increase the scope of required protection because development efforts span the SAP databases, and any loss affects the delivery of new features, security updates, reports, and other critical projects.

Recognizing the importance of data protection in SAP landscapes, Dell EMC has integrated Data Domain protection into Ready Bundles for SAP Landscapes. Data Domain systems provide SAP landscapes with these benefits:

• Centralized management—You can manage all your SAP databases, includingSAP HANA, through a single interface. In addition, the Data Domain system easilyintegrates with other databases, such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, tofurther centralize backups.

Introduction

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• Scalability—Data Domain support for greater throughput protects more databasesfaster. For example, the DD9300 model can protect 41 terabytes per hour and 328TB in less than 8 hours.

• Data deduplication—The Data Domain system can reduce the data footprint ofbackups by 10 to 30x. This means the business can have more backups onlinewithout having to archive. This use case demonstrates the deduplication that isachieved in backing up the NetWeaver database.

In the Dell EMC engineering labs, we used the Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Unity solution to virtualize an SAP NetWeaver database. In our use case, the PowerEdge R940 server represents a production system running a database of approximately 2.7 TB. We backed up the NetWeaver database to the Data Domain appliance five times to simulate a business week’s worth of backups. Between each backup, we added unique data to the database to simulate data growth and make the test case similar to a real production system.

The following table shows how the database size increased after each backup. For example, the initial database size was 2.77 TB for the first backup and increased by 116 GB plus additional free space to 2.94 TB for the second backup. By the fifth and final backup, the database size was 3.106 TB.

Table 5. Data Domain use case: Size of production database after backups

Initial backup Second backup Third backup Fourth backup Final backup

Data size (TB) 2.318 2.434 2.574 2.575 2.576

Free space (TB) 0.46 0.51 0.53 0.53 0.53

Total database size (TB) 2.778 2.944 3.104 3.105 3.106

The DD Boost agent integrates with the NetWeaver database, in this case Oracle 12c, to perform host-based deduplication to the Data Domain system. By sending only the unique blocks over the network, the Data Domain system saves bandwidth and lowers network utilization, a significant benefit when backups are happening in parallel in the data center.

This use case demonstrates how Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Data Domain can quickly back up a production database system and offer a consolidation savings to the business. During our tests, we gathered backup metrics and screen shots to show how we achieved our goals.

The initial full backup of the SAP NetWeaver 2.7 TB database took 45 minutes to complete. Subsequent backup times slightly increased, as shown in the following figure, even with DD Boost host-based deduplication. The backup times increased because full backups require Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to read the entire database.

Backup times

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Figure 2. Backup time and database size

The following figure shows the network utilization during each of the backups and the resulting database size, revealing the value of the DD Boost technology. With the first full backup, network utilization is very high because the entire database is considered unique data and has to be protected on the Data Domain system. During the second full backup, network utilization drops significantly, by 350 Mb/s, because, with most of the database already protected, only the unique data has to be transferred. Network utilization drops more with the fourth and final backups because the unique datasets are smaller.

Figure 3. Network utilization and database size

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Lowering network utilization is a major concern because most applications and databases are backed up during the same off-business hours. With utilization minimized, more databases sharing the same network can be efficiently protected. The larger the data center and the greater the number of applications, the more important it is to have a lower network utilization during backup windows.

Figure 4. Network utilization and database size

The CPU utilization follows a pattern that is similar to the network utilization. In our testing, we captured the DD Boost CPU utilization to determine the processor impact on the database server. The first full backup demands the most resources because the entire database is transferred to and protected on the Data Domain appliance.

As shown in the following figure, the CPU utilization average was 27 percent during the first full backup and then dropped to 16 percent during the second backup. By the fifth and final backup, CPU utilization was down to 10 percent. Test results seem to show a relationship between the amount of unique data and CPU utilization for the DD Boost system. The greater amount of unique data, the higher the CPU utilization for DD Boost.

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Figure 5. CPU utilization and database size

Each database system has its own CPU utilization profile, but, in general, average processor utilization for most production databases is less than 70 percent. In a scenario where a database has an average CPU utilization of 60 percent, CPU utilization during the first full backup would be 87 percent and then drop to 60 percent after 45 minutes. In this scenario, depending on the amount of unique daily data, subsequent backups would take approximately 77 percent CPU utilization or less. Even with 77 percent average CPU utilization for backups, the production database server would have enough unused CPU cycles to support additional processing.

In this section, we explore the use case backup results on the Data Domain appliance. The impact of backups to the target is sometimes overlooked. If the target is undersized, the protection solution does not perform at scale. Here we look at how the Data Domain system performed in our use case and show where customers can see real value from this protection solution.

Data Domain total compression factor Total compression is the total amount of compression that the Data Domain system performed with the data it received. The first backup, which had entirely unique data, had the lowest total compression factor. The second and third backups, which had similar amounts of unique data, had total compression factors of 7.7 and 9.2 respectively. The fourth and final backups had the least amount of unique data and, thus, the highest total compression factors. The higher the total compression factor the greater the space savings on the Data Domain appliance.

The following figure shows the total compression factors for each of the backups.

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Figure 6. Total compression factors

Data Domain reduction percentage The reduction percentage expresses the total space savings as a percentage to easily show the consolidation achieved. Because the first backup is entirely unique data, it has the lowest reduction percentage, but the percentage, demonstrating substantial space savings, is still significant. The second and third backups had similar amounts of unique data, and their reduction percentages are 87 and 89 percent respectively. The fourth and final backups had the least amount of unique data, so they have the highest reduction percentages. The higher the reduction percentage, the greater the space savings is on the Data Domain appliance.

The following figure shows the reduction percentages for each of the backups.

Figure 7. Reduction percentages

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Conclusion

25 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Summary of Data Domain protection The ability to quickly back up mission-critical systems, such as NetWeaver databases, with minimal impact to the PowerEdge production server benefits the business. In this use case, test results show that DD Boost software backed up a 2.7 TB database in 45 minutes using 27 percent of CPU resources for the first full backup. The subsequent full backups revealed the value of using DD Boost host-based deduplication:

• Network utilization dropped significantly. The first backup used 450 Mb/s butthen dropped to 100 Mb/s for the second and third backups and then 15 Mb/s forthe fourth and final backups.

• CPU utilization dropped significantly: The first backup averaged 27 percent CPUutilization. That percentage dropped by 11 points for the second backup to 16percent. The fourth and final backups were low at 11 and 10 percent respectively.

With the ability to achieve space savings on the Data Domain appliance, IT organizations can consolidate more backups, easily centralize management, and keep the backups online without having to immediately archive the backups. As part of our use case testing, we gathered proof points from the Data Domain system to determine the space savings that were achieved by backing up a NetWeaver database. Results show:

• Total compression savings increased significantly: Total compression factorshows the total compression savings for the protected data. The first full backuphad a factor of 2.8, and the second and third backups had total compression factorsof 7.7 and 9.2 respectively. The third and fourth backups had total compressionfactors of 76 and 61 respectively.

• Space savings increased significantly. The reduction percentage shows the totalcompression saved, expressed as a percentage. In this case, the first full backuphad a substantial savings, considering the size of unique data was over 2 TB, witha reduction percentage of 64 percent. The subsequent backups, with reductionpercentages of 87 percent, 89 percent, 99 percent, and 98 percent, respectively,showed large space savings.

This data protection use case shows how the integration between Ready Solution for SAP Landscapes with Data Domain can effectively protect a NetWeaver database while providing space savings that enables the business to protect more data. We tested this use case in the Dell EMC engineering labs to validate these proof points and show how this comprehensive solution provides a modern platform for managing and protecting SAP landscapes.

Conclusion

Dell EMC offers a range of Ready Solutions so that customers can match their business objectives with an integrated and validated infrastructure. Ready Solutions for SAP are optimized for customers’ SAP workloads and enable IT organizations to deliver SAP solutions faster and more reliably while protecting business-critical data.

All Ready Solutions for SAP have been thoroughly tested and validated, are certified with SAP HANA, and accelerate time-to-value. Because Dell EMC engineering has done all the integration work, Ready Solutions do not require additional testing and do not pose compatibility issues.

Summary

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Conclusion

26 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

Ready Solutions for SAP include:

• Ready Node for SAP HANA—A PowerEdge server that plugs into your datacenter, offering the fastest way to modernize your SAP ecosystem. Choosebetween these options:

PowerEdge R740xd—The R740xd server is the most cost-effective entry pointand can scale up to 3 TB for transactional workloads.

PowerEdge R940—The 2- and 4-socket R940 servers enable you to start witha small configuration of 192 GB. They offer even better expandability, withcertified 3 TB and 6 TB memory configurations for transactional workloads.

PowerEdge R930—The 4-socket, earlier generation of servers offers lessscalability but has a lower price and might be a good fit for your SAP HANArequirements. Start as low as 128 GB of memory and scale up to 4 TB fortransactional workloads.

• Ready Bundle for SAP HANA Scale-out—An integrated solution, includingservers, storage, and networking, that provides a cost-effective way to quicklyimplement an SAP HANA scale-out architecture for data analytics. This solution ispowered by PowerEdge R940 servers combined with the Compellent SC5040storage array. The minimum configuration has two 3 TB PowerEdge servers, growsin increments of 3 TB per node, and expands up to a maximum of 16 nodes and 48TB of memory.

• Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes—Integrated solutions that include servers,storage, and networking for SAP landscapes. Choose between a Unity solution forsmall to midsize SAP landscapes or a VMAX All Flash solution for midsize to largelandscapes:

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with Unity—This solution for small tomidsize SAP landscapes enables fast provisioning and easy management ofSAP databases and applications. With this solution, you can easily create,copy, refresh, and delete databases and applications with no initial disk spaceconsumption. The Unity array provides mission-critical data protection withnative synchronous and asynchronous replication, and integrates with DellEMC RecoverPoint system for DVR-like rollback functionality. The arrayincludes FAST VP and FAST Cache data acceleration technologies for hybridpools.

Ready Bundle for SAP Landscapes with VMAX All Flash—This solution formedium to large SAP landscapes delivers submillisecond response times forOLTP workloads and high bandwidth for data warehouse and OLAP workloads.It includes powerful storage provisioning capabilities and a data protectionportfolio that is one of the deepest in the storage industry. This Ready Bundleincludes PowerEdge R740xd and R940 servers and VMAX 250F and 950F all-flash storage arrays. With the Dell ESI plug-in, the storage provisioning featuresintegrate with SAP LaMa for full automation and orchestration of an SAPlandscape. SRDF data protection with synchronous, asynchronous, and Metromodes provides 99.9999 percent mission-critical application availability.

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Conclusion

27 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for SAP White Paper

The data protection use case that is included in this paper shows the value of using the Data Domain appliance with DD Boost host-based deduplication in an SAP landscape. Dell EMC engineering tests show a 2.7 TB NetWeaver database was fully backed up in 45 minutes. After the first full backup, we saw the following results:

• Network utilization dropped significantly. The first backup to 450 Mb/s but thendropped to 100 Mb/s for the second and third backups and then 15 Mb/s for thefourth and final backups.

• CPU utilization dropped significantly. The first backup was 27 percent but thendropped by 11 points to 16 percent for the second backup. The fourth and finalbackups were low at 11 and 10 percent, respectively.

• Compression savings increased significantly. The total compression factor,which indicates the total compression savings for the protected data, increasedfrom 2.8 for the first full backup to 7.7 and 9.2, respectively, for the second, andthen to 76 and 61, respectively, for the last two backups.

• Total space savings increased significantly. The reduction percentage showsthe total space savings as a percentage. After the first backup, the reductionpercentage was 64 percent—a substantial savings, considering that the uniquedata was over 2 TB. Subsequent reduction percentages, ranging from 87 percent to99 percent, showed a large space savings.

This use case shows how IT organizations can protect large database ecosystems. By integrating Data Domain with SAP Ready Solutions, customers receive a solution designed to both accelerate and protect their systems.

Findings